of the problem of apprenticeship. The apprenticeship-system has long
been obsolete: it is condemned educationally because it involves the
transference of the pupil from the school to the workshop at too early
an age, and it is ineffective industrially because under modern
factory-conditions there is no certainty that the apprentice will
even receive proper technical training. The system is already dead in
many trades, and in others it is kept alive only to enable the trade
unions to limit the number of entrants into the industry. It cannot be
long, however, before common needs force education and industry into
some sort of concordat. The industrial firms need skilled workers;
the educationists want those skilled workers to be trained in such
a way that they may derive educational benefit from their technical
pursuits. To meet the difficulty there are two obvious possibilities.
The whole apprentice-system might be abolished, and the training of
skilled workers might be carried out entirely in technical schools
organised on the lines of the _écoles professionelles_ of France, which
resemble factories in their equipment and which turn out fully-trained
workers after a three years’ course. If, on the other hand, the rule
of apprenticeship is retained, it should be possible to substitute
education in Junior Technical Schools for the first two years of
apprenticeship. Steps of this kind have already been taken in London,
where it is usual for young workers to have their apprenticeship
shortened by a period corresponding to their training in a trade
school. But, of course, further advances in this direction can be taken
only with the co-operation of the trade unions concerned. This may
cause difficulty. Somewhat strangely, the educational spokesmen of
the trade unions seem so much concerned about securing a university
education for the sons of the “workers” that they have little interest
in the matter of craft-instruction. But perhaps this attitude of the
trade union leaders is no more strange than that of the employers
who talk loudly of the need for increased efficiency if British
manufacturers are to compete in the markets of the world, and yet do
little or nothing to ensure that their young workers shall be given
adequate training for the work they are to perform.
But we have still to consider the future of boys and girls of low
mentality who, on leaving the primary school, will normally enter
unskilled or semi-skilled occupations, and who are not likely to profit
by full-time vocational training. It is these who present the most
difficult problem to the educationist. It is hard to find the right
way of approach to such children even under school-conditions; it is
far harder to exert effective teaching-influence over them when they
have been freed from disciplinary restraints. Yet it is imperative for
the health of the community that young workers of this type should
not be allowed to pass entirely out of educational control as soon as
they leave the elementary school. For them, it would seem, the aid of
Mr. Fisher’s Act will once more have to be invoked, and compulsory
Continuation Schools will be established. At these classes the object
will be not so much to teach the students any specific subjects as
to keep them under disciplinary influences and to develop in them
the sense of personal and civic responsibility. The short experience
gained from the few continuation schools established immediately
after 1918 made it clear that giving much purely cultural teaching to
workers of low type in unskilled jobs, however desirable, is actually
impracticable. Nor is it generally possible to give much direct
vocational instruction. Physical training and handwork must be made
important parts of the courses, and good work can be done through
the formation of students’ clubs. In fact, those who have charge of
Continuation classes will have to regard themselves less as teachers
than as welfare-workers.
The scheme of development which has been mapped out clearly demands the
creation of a link between education and industry such as does not at
present exist. Boys and girls who, through lack of initiative or of any
special predilection, have not found for themselves suitable employment
by the time they are due to leave school will not be allowed to drift
into the first blind-alley occupation that presents itself. The
education authorities will have made full surveys of local industrial
and business requirements and will thus be able to indicate suitable
openings. Moreover, account will be taken of the applicant’s special
abilities in recommending any particular post to him. The question
of vocational guidance has for some years attracted a good deal of
attention in America, and a considerable amount of work has been done
in this direction. In this country, many local educational authorities
(in particular, the London boroughs) are attempting to carry out
schemes of juvenile vocational guidance through the After-Care
Committees and the Juvenile Advisory Committee of the Employment
Bureaux. In London, too, the Headmasters of the Secondary Schools have
formed an Employment Committee which puts pupils in touch with firms
who have vacancies.
More important in this connection is the investigation recently
carried out by the Industrial Fatigue Research Board in conjunction
with the National Institute of Industrial Psychology. Under the
direction of Dr Cyril Burt a careful study was made of all the children
(to the number of a hundred) due to leave three selected London schools
within a period of twelve months. All data obtainable from the schools
were collected, the children were subjected to mental tests, the homes
were visited, and each child was personally interviewed. In the light
of the evidence thus obtained specific vocational recommendations
were made. After an interval of two years the investigators again
interviewed the children in their homes in order to test the results
of the recommendations. It appeared that the children who had entered
the industries suggested to them had proved more efficient than
their fellows, and over 80 per cent. of them declared that they were
satisfied with their position and prospects. On the other hand, of
those who obtained employment different from the kind recommended, less
than 40 per cent. were satisfied. The value of this experiment is, of
course, limited by the smallness of its scale, but the results are
certainly encouraging. One point that has been made clear is the need
for full information as to the requirements of the various trades.
Such efforts at linking the schools with the office and the workshop
are at present tentative and sporadic; but they are significant of
future developments,――developments which will be hastened by the
growing determination during these years of trade depression to
prevent the waste and deterioration of our youths, so far as it can be
prevented by better organisation. There can be little doubt that within
the next few years we shall be forced, if not by practical wisdom, at
least by economic necessity, into creating a universal scheme which
shall relieve the employers of the need for haphazard advertisement in
recruiting their junior staffs, and which shall ensure that everything
possible is done to facilitate the entry of a youth into that
particular job in which he can do work of most value to himself and to
the community.
IV
THE UNIVERSITIES
The Academic Mind of To-Day and To-Morrow.
“’Tis not a melancholy _utinam_ of my own, but the desires of
better heads, that there were a general synod――not to unite the
incompatible difference of religion, but,――for the benefit of
learning, to reduce it, as it lay at first, in a few and solid
authors; and to condemn to the fire those swarms and millions
of rhapsodies, begotten only to distract and abuse the weaker
judgements of scholars, and to maintain the trade and mystery
of typographers.”――_Sir Thomas Browne._
It will be observed that our survey of probable future developments
in the lower branches of education is hopeful. These are good reasons
for optimism: the trend of opinion which will mould the schools of
the future is already clearly in evidence; our obvious defects to-day
are defects of organisation, and these can be remedied by any capable
administrator; the seeds of the growths we have foreseen have already
been planted; and, finally, economic exigencies will provide the
drive necessary to overcome the dilatoriness inseparable from public
activity. But we must confess that we are much concerned about the
universities. There are tendencies in university life to-day that give
ample cause for misgiving,――the more so because they spring rather from
vital weakness reflecting the intellectual vices of our age than from
defective methods and organisation.
Not that our universities do not show very obvious defects in
method and organisation. (We are considering now especially the new
universities. Just as in our survey of secondary education we made no
reference to the public schools, which have their own tradition, and
which will remain outside a state-system, so we may now leave out of
account Oxford and Cambridge, which have their own teaching-methods
and which again are not likely to be amenable to state-interference.
Moreover, the inevitable extension of higher education will be seen
in the creation of more universities of the new type, as well as in
the enlargement of those already in existence, and thus Oxford and
Cambridge are likely to turn out an ever-diminishing proportion of
the total number of graduates in this country). Criticism may well be
levelled at the insufficient importance attached to social life in the
modern universities. It is much too easy for young men and women to
attend courses of lectures for three years or so and amass a certain
quantity of information on given subjects without coming in contact
with any intellectual influences outside the class room. This danger
is, of course, inevitable when the students are not resident in a
college. A remedy is being provided to some extent by the erection of
hostels, and much more may be done in this direction; but there is
still a difficulty arising from the fairly large proportion of students
who live at home in the university-town. As part of the same problem
must be mentioned the insufficient attention given to games. This is
due not merely to the frequent absence of adequate playing-fields,
which might be remedied, but to the fact that college lectures
take place during the whole of the day and are so arranged that no
considerable body of students is free for the whole of more than one
afternoon a week. In other words, college work is organised solely with
a view to academic requirements.
And then there is the teaching by means of lectures. As a method
this was rendered obsolete as soon as books were rapidly and cheaply
printed, and yet, whereas Oxford and Cambridge have long pursued a
more excellent way, the new universities have strangely revived and
perpetuated the mediaeval practice. A century-and-a-half ago Dr Johnson
was emphatic about the futility of lectures. (“People have nowadays
got a strange opinion that everything should be taught by lectures.
Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the
books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be
best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shewn. You
may teach chymistry by lectures. You might teach making of shoes by
lectures!”). It is delightful to imagine his remarks if he could walk
through a modern college and see dozens of lecturers each droning
from his rostrum,――in these days when library shelves and publishers’
store-rooms are stuffed with reliable text-books on every conceivable
subject. Surely no system of teaching can have ever been devised with
so little regard for ordinary efficiency. Batches of students are set
to take imperfect notes of a probably imperfectly delivered lecture by
a man who has either taken his material from books that they ought to
read themselves, or is dictating what is really an original text-book,
which obviously, in the interests of economy in time and labour, to say
nothing of accuracy, ought to be printed. It is to be feared that under
present arrangements a college lecturer fulfils the whole of the duties
officially required of him if he thus turns himself into a gramophone
for so many hours per week. If university-teaching meant no more than
this, and if the lecture were its only channel, we should feel bound
to urge that the present wasteful duplication of lectures in various
university-centres should be avoided by enlisting the aid of wireless,
and that standard lectures should be broadcast to students throughout
the kingdom in their own homes.
The educational efficacy of the universities of this and other
countries is being weakened, however, by a more insidious disease,――a
disease of which the defective teaching-methods and the excessive
absorption in purely academic pursuits are merely outward symptoms.
The intellectual and moral malady of this present age has infected
our seats of learning so that they appear to be abandoning the ideal
of a liberal education and to be substituting the narrow aim of the
acquisition of specialised knowledge. The modern university must be a
centre of research: the danger is that it will neglect to be also a
centre of education.
Research is the intellectual idol of our time. The fiery zeal for
discovery which animates us resembles that which was abroad five
centuries ago in Europe. Indeed, we of to-day are borne along by the
second wave of the great tide of the Renaissance. The great awakening
of the human spirit, due, in part, to the rediscovery of ancient
literature and art, urged men to the passionate pursuit of truth
and beauty. Research and creative activity went hand in hand. The
inspiration which produced the great scholars, painters, and architects
lasted for a season. Then the vital energy was dissipated: scholarship
degenerated into gerund-grinding, literature into stylistic display,
and art into lifeless imitation. But meanwhile the newly-liberated
spirit of enquiry was turning from the past and seeking fresh objects
of study in natural phenomena. Slowly and tentatively, at first, the
human intellect explored the fringes of those vast fields of knowledge
which had lain almost untouched since the time of the Greeks. Then, in
the last century, the scattered sparks suddenly flamed into a great
outburst of scientific discovery, and the western mind was amazed
by the undreamed-of treasures spread before it. Here was a second
Renaissance, the child of the first and informed with the same spirit
of divine curiosity, but working in a new direction. The prime object
of the nineteenth century investigator was to accumulate observed facts
about the material universe, to find theories to interpret those facts,
and perhaps ultimately to lay bare the innermost secrets of Nature.
More and more wonders were discovered; and each new wonder pointed the
road to fresh territories awaiting the pioneer. There must be formed a
great army of explorers. The recruitment and the training of this army
was naturally carried on in the universities. The aims and methods of
science acquired enormous prestige. The spirit of research pervaded
every department of academic activity.
In the reorganised universities of nineteenth-century Germany, the
new spirit found its most complete expression. The professor was
given a two-fold function: he was to teach, and also to advance his
particular study or science. To-day teaching is often made subordinate
to research. A characteristic product of the German academic system is
the “seminar,” which is for the student of humanistic learning what the
laboratory is to the scientist: in the seminar the student is given
training in methods of original investigation. The course of study is
highly specialised and leads to the degree of “doctor of philosophy,”
for which he must present a dissertation contributing to the advance
of knowledge. The close association of American students with Germany
has led to the importation of German university methods and ideals into
the United States. In England, too, there has been an ever-increasing
tendency to approximate our standards to those of Germany. The Honours
courses, at any rate at the new universities, become increasingly
specialised, and more and more insistence is being laid on the
necessity for original research as the crown of an academic career.
Thus the universities are living in an intellectual atmosphere
manufactured by the scientists. The great craving is for
knowledge,――knowledge of natural processes, and knowledge of man’s
past history. This craving manifests itself at every turn. Apart from
the labours of scientists, historians, and archaeologists in what
Johnson calls the “academic bowers,” we read daily of search-parties
(many of whom are organised by European or American universities)
proceeding to the ends of the earth,――this one bringing to light
the treasures of Egyptian royal tombs, another revealing a hitherto
unknown civilisation of the ancient world, a third finding dinosaur’s
eggs, a fourth studying the characteristics and the history of a
savage tribe. A leading newspaper recently informed us proudly that
no fewer than two hundred exploring parties are setting out this year
on various quests――more than ever before in the history of the world.
The interest in these efforts is not confined to the few. Accounts of
marvellous discoveries and inventions bring romance to the millions
in our industrial civilisation. The popular press knows the appeal
of big headlines over an article giving a highly coloured account of
the latest results of research; and the bookstalls are crowded with
magazines devoted to the Wonders of Science and giving the City clerk
and typist, hungry for knowledge, an Illustrated Outline of this, that,
or the other field of information.
Whither is this enthusiasm for knowledge leading us? What benefits
will accrue to the individual or to society when, with untold labour,
we have learned a fraction more about the history of man or penetrated
a few steps further into the illimitable arcana of nature? These are
questions which those engaged in investigation and those whose delight
is to hear some new thing alike hardly pause to ask. It is assumed
that all knowledge of fact is valuable, and therefore is to be pursued
for its own sake. To many this will seem a self-evident proposition.
Such people may be reminded that curiosity about the material world
has not always been a characteristic of the western nations. For many
centuries man was not in the least interested to know whether the
earth went round the sun or the sun round the earth: he was content
to take on trust the evidence of his senses. It is even a matter for
debate whether the sum of human happiness has been increased by the
knowledge that has come from Galileo’s labours. It is a perennial human
weakness to pursue one aim to the unreasonable exclusion of others, to
mistake the means for the end. The great humanists were so possessed
by ideals which they found in the antique world that they sought to
achieve them even at the expense of personal and social morality; their
successors mistook the husk for the kernel and allowed pedantry to
displace scholarship. We of this age are being diverted from other aims
and allowing our intellectual life to be narrowed by an unreasoning
zeal for research. We are influenced too much by the delusion that the
making of “a contribution to knowledge” is the beginning of wisdom.
Will the universities rid themselves of the incubus of research, or at
least relegate it to a separate department so that the main efforts of
the professors and lecturers may be concentrated on other matters? On
the answer to this question the future of the universities depends. It
must be decided whether the primary business of the university teacher
is to teach or to carry on the investigations in which he is privately
interested; whether the business of the student is to become educated
or to become a specialist; whether, in short, there is any necessary
relationship between the two branches of university activity,――research
and education. At present there is little indication of how these
problems will be settled: as yet they are scarcely mentioned in
academic circles in this country. Criticism of university methods and
ideals is heard among people who have left professorial tutelage, and
book-reviewers are occasionally entertaining at the expense of typical
products of the academic mind; but for the most part the standards
of the dons are taken for granted. The late Sir Walter Raleigh, it
is true, did not conceal his antipathy to the “serious business of
scholarship,” but his brother professors must have considered him a sad
dog.
While English universities give no sign of interest in fundamental
problems affecting their well-being, a ray of hope comes from America.
In the recent annual report of Columbia University, the president,
Dr Nicholas Murray Butler, speaking with all the authority of his
distinguished position, faces critical issues with a frankness that is
possible, perhaps, only in America. He is concerned about the dearth
of great minds in spite of the spread of educational facilities, and
he asks whether the universities have not destroyed the ideal of a
liberal education, and with it the liberally educated man himself,
through allowing the choice of less valuable subjects and laying too
much stress on early specialisation. In spite of the efforts of two
generations to make science an instrument of education, and in spite of
the inherent excellence of the scientific method, he has grave doubts
about the results. He finds the cause of his dissatisfaction in the
methods and aims of the teachers of the sciences. “If these subjects
are to be presented only for the purpose of training specialists, and
if the methods to be followed are those that, while appropriate for
investigation, have no relation whatever to interpretation, then it
may well be that in another generation general interest in the natural
and experimental sciences and general knowledge of their meaning
and significance will have greatly declined.... The example of the
ancient classics ought to suffice. They were killed largely by those
who taught them.” On the subject of research Dr Butler is equally
outspoken. “The word research,” he says, “has come to be something
like the blessed word Mesopotamia. It is used to reduce everyone to
silence, acquiescence, and approbation. The fact of the matter is that
something between seventy-five per cent. and ninety per cent. of what
is called research in the various universities and institutes of the
land is not properly research at all, but simply the re-arrangement
or re-classification of existing data or well-known phenomena.” He
reminds his readers that “an original investigation may, and usually
does, add a good deal to the knowledge of the individual investigator
without adding anything to the knowledge of the human race.”
Dr Butler attacks the principles on which present-day science-teaching
in the universities is carried out: such an indictment applies with
equal, if not with greater force, to the teaching of the humanities,
into which scientific methods have intruded themselves with disastrous
results. It is natural that the historian of to-day should adopt the
character of the scientific investigator; but surely something is
wrong when university and other presses issue volume after volume
of historical study of a kind which, judged by any of the wider
canons, can have no conceivable value. Too often the specialists
forget that the many intriguing little puzzles that they try to solve
are intriguing little puzzles and nothing more. The researcher in
the natural sciences can always plead that his discoveries, however
insignificant at the moment, may take on great importance in connection
with work in other fields. The researcher in history can hardly put
forward the same plea. The scientific or pseudo-scientific spirit
applied to history has tended to destroy the sense of values.